Chapter Twenty-Two The Tale of Melilot #2
“Says the masked man who fights monsters with his fists.”
The adults drank the wine and chatted while Jonquil frowned thoughtfully at the baby, and then the visitors departed with nary a hint about the queen’s demand.
“Perhaps it has slipped her mind?” the man speculated.
The woman shook her head. “No matter how insignificant we may be, she cannot have forgotten the curse she laid upon our household. There is some plot afoot here. We should not drink the rest of the wine, and we should destroy this doll lest it do harm to our child.”
They poured the dregs of the bottle on the ground and threw the doll into the fire. But the wine they had consumed caused them no ill effects, and the doll burned like an ordinary doll.
The queen came over to chat with her neighbors once every couple of weeks for the next few years, bringing gifts that were eventually accepted.
Most often, she came with her own child in tow.
Jonquil and Melilot began to play together once the younger girl was able to walk.
They’d squeeze their way through the garden fence to view the marvelous flowers.
Their parents discussed the noteworthy issues of the day, such as which farmhands were secretly kings and whether an alliance with the mermaid kingdom would put a stop to mute girls washing up onto the shore and causing a fuss.
Melilot’s father came to look forward to these visits. Her mother, however, never fully trusted the queen.
“A sorceress does nothing unless it is to her own benefit, and neither does a monarch,” Melilot’s mother warned her. “Someday, she will try to take you from me. Be watchful and wary, and do not be deceived.” Melilot listened and tried to do as her mother bade her.
But when Melilot was still very young, her mother died.
It would be a neater story if her death could be blamed on the queen—a spell, a curse, a dagger in the night.
In later years, Melilot would wish she had the consolation of believing the queen was the cause of her mother’s death, of having someone to blame.
But she did not believe it. Her mother’s death was as terrible and as prosaic as any ordinary death, with no hint of magic to it.
No telltale bird proclaimed the queen to be a murderer; no flute made of bone revealed some hideous plot behind it all.
Melilot’s mother died of pneumonia, and this time neither medical skill nor special herbs were able to save her.
Soon after that—far too soon, in Melilot’s opinion—her father began to woo the queen.
Romancing her with his words, sending her small presents she could not possibly need.
She accepted his attentions, and before long he informed Melilot they were leaving their warm, snug cottage and moving into the drafty stone palace next door.
Her father was marrying the queen and would become her new consort.
“I am your mother now,” the queen advised Melilot the day she arrived in the palace. “I will raise you as I raise my own child, and I shall teach you sorcery and all manner of secret things.”
“You are not my mother,” Melilot retorted. “My mother is dead.”
“You are willful,” the queen scoffed. “But you must learn to obey me nonetheless.”
Less than a year later, the queen gave birth to another child, a girl she named Calla, after the beautiful lilies that bloomed in the garden.
“This is your sister,” the queen informed Melilot the day the child was born. “Now that you and I are linked by blood, you must acknowledge I am your mother.”
“You are not my mother,” Melilot rebutted her. “My mother is dead.”
“You are willful,” the queen sneered. “But you must learn to obey me nonetheless.”
Their quarreling grew constant. Her father stayed neutral whenever they fought, never weighing in—
“That must have stung.”
“What? No. Why?” Startled, I spoke so loudly that Sam drew an inch or two away.
We’d been huddled close together in the darkness, and I’d shouted almost directly in his ear.
“It wasn’t like he took her side,” I continued in a quieter voice.
And tugged him back again; cold air was already filtering into the gap between us.
“If you don’t take sides in an argument between a parent and a child,” Sam replied, “doesn’t it basically mean you’ve sided with the adult? That’s who has all the authority. It’s not a fair fight.”
I spent a few moments thinking about that.
“Maybe,” I said. I’d always laid the blame for the miseries of my childhood on my stepmother.
It had never occurred to me that my father might have had some culpability as well, if only through inaction.
“I’m sure he was trying his best,” I told Sam. “Anyway, it hardly matters now.”
The years passed by, one after another, and Melilot learned medicine from her father and also, albeit reluctantly, sorcery and statecraft from her stepmother—although she was never particularly good at either magic or politics.
She grew to love Jonquil and Calla as sisters.
But she always remembered the words of her mother, and she never gave the queen her trust.
Her father was sorely grieved by the rift between the two. It wore on him and aged him beyond his years. He grew frail and weary, and no one was shocked when, not so much as a decade after his remarriage, he followed his first wife into death.
“I’m sorry.” Sam gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “About your father and mother, both.”
“It’s all right. It was years ago.” After the slightest of pauses, I added, “But thank you, even so.”
As always, Melilot blamed her stepmother for what had happened. Although this time, perhaps, not any more than she blamed herself.
“I am your only parent now,” the queen observed to Melilot not long after the funeral. “Surely this is when you will admit I am your mother.”
“You are not my mother!” Melilot shouted. “My mother is dead!”
The queen’s frown was ominous. “When your father still lived, I allowed your willfulness to grow unchecked. I shall allow it no longer. You must learn to obey. Fetch me three pure white hairs from a unicorn’s beard.”
Melilot’s jaw dropped open. “What?”
“You heard me. It is a simple task, no more than I would ask of any of my daughters. Do it, or you shall face whatever punishment I devise.”
Fearing this punishment, Melilot did as her stepmother wished.
She spent the next month tracking down a unicorn and convincing it to let her pluck its beard.
When she returned, she scattered the hairs before the throne, declaring, “There! I have performed the task commanded of me by my queen. Now let me be in peace.”
Her stepmother, however, was unsatisfied. “You have obeyed me once, but will you do so a second time? Fetch me the shadow of a candle flame.”
Melilot stared. “Fetch you what?”
“You heard me. It is a simple task, no more than I would ask of any of my daughters.”
“It most certainly is not!” Melilot contended. “You would never assign such an impossible quest to Jonquil or Calla!”
“Jonquil has already brought me the shadow of a clear pane of glass,” the queen asserted, “while you were out frolicking with unicorns. She searches for the flame’s shadow even now. If you wish to have any hope of finding it first, I suggest you make haste.”
Not wishing to be outdone by her sister, Melilot did as her stepmother bade her.
The tasks continued as the years passed by—
“Where on earth did you find the shadow of a candle flame, though?”
“It turns out fire is less dense than the surrounding air,” I explained, “which gives it a lower refractive index. So if you shine an even brighter light source on it, you’ll see a dark region—”
“That’s a lot less poetic than I would have expected.”
“Trust me, it only takes one or two impossible quests before you become a firm advocate of victory by pragmatic technicality.”
The tasks continued as the years passed by.
Melilot was sent to copy an endless book, to capture the moon in a cup, to make bread from a stone.
Sometimes her sisters went with her, and sometimes she went alone, setting forth on her own to seek wonders, find treasures, and match her wits against villains.
The work was often tedious and always difficult.
Her sorcerous skills did not develop at the same pace as her sisters’, and she grew jealous of their easy, hereditary might.
Although admittedly, Melilot’s refusal to practice magic, in order to spite her stepmother, may have also contributed.
Whatever the cause, she never came close to matching their magical prowess, and she was a greater failure still compared to the queen.
Her sisters often had to bail her out of difficulties.
Which only reinforced her feelings of inadequacy.
By the time she was sixteen years old, she was thoroughly sick of all this. And one day, when her stepmother attempted to shove her out on another ridiculous-sounding quest, Melilot refused.
Her stepmother paused in the middle of her instructions. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Melilot growled at her. “I’m done.
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s an enemy army threatening our borders.
” For indeed, such was the case, although that threat has gone entirely unmentioned until this moment.
“I think there might be more important things right now than finding a dragon’s toenail for you. ”
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “And if I say that there is not?”
“Then I would answer that you’re not my mother, and you can’t tell me what to do. You might have my sisters under your thumb, but not me. Not anymore. And you know what? I don’t think there’s going to be any of this ‘punishment’ you keep talking about. I’m calling your bluff.”
At this, the queen pressed her lips together, nodded, and promptly ordered Melilot to be confined in a tower deep within the trackless wilderness of Skalla. The tower had no doorway. The only opening in the sheer wall was a single small window at the highest possible point.
“That’s terrible.” Sam sounded appalled. “You must have been miserable.”
I shrugged. “Some might say I got off lightly.”
“I don’t. Your queen built a doorless tower just to punish her daughter for disobedience. That’s beyond excessive.”
“Well, that wasn’t the only reason she had it. It was a—Hm.”
“What?”
“Possibly nothing. An idea that we might want to look into once there’s enough light.”
Every morning, Melilot’s stepmother would stop by the base of the tower and call up to her, “Will you not let me in?”
Melilot would yell, “Do not mock me, you poisonous snake! You know full well there is no door.”
For a full year, Melilot languished in the tower. Day after day she gazed upon the wilderness of Skalla. With little to occupy her time, she spent her days resenting her stepmother, resenting herself, and longing to be free.
“Why have you stopped?” Sam asked after a moment.
“That’s the end.”
“That can’t be the end!” Sam sat halfway up. My head slid off his shoulder. “That’s not a finished story. What happened next?”
“Nothing. It was a boring year in a tower. But I got out eventually, and now I’m here.”
“You’re skipping bits.” He let his head fall back on the pillow.
“There isn’t anything left to tell,” I said as I resettled myself. “Some stories are like that.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
—
But of course, I was lying.